I pick my battles…

Today someone called me an apologist. Not because I defended harm. Not because I dismissed someone’s behaviour. But because I shared a quote, a line of text, written by a flawed man.

It surprised me, not because strangers on the internet are incapable of nuance (we’ve all seen evidence of that), but because of the certainty with which people leap to assign motives that simply aren’t there.

A quote is not an endorsement, a sentence is not a shrine. Using someone’s words doesn’t mean you’ve co-signed their life choices. If it did, half of human history would disappear overnight.

The real truth is, if we only allowed ourselves to reference morally flawless humans, we would have no literature, no art, no philosophy, no poetry, no music, no history. We would be left with dust and blank shelves.

Great works have come from complicated people, terrible people, flawed people. People who did beautiful things, and people who did unforgivable things.

We quote Shakespeare, Picasso, Poe, Hemingway, Van Gogh, Gandhi, Churchill, Wagner… all deeply flawed men, some harmful, some haunted, some both.

We reference their work not because we excuse their lives, but because human expression doesn’t become meaningless simply because the creator was imperfect.

And yet today, over a single quote, someone felt justified in saying, “Quit being an apologist, it’s gross”

It’s not like I marched into the street holding a banner of support. I posted a quote that resinated in a literature group.

And the irony isn’t lost on me, because half the world openly supports harmful leaders, violent ideologies, and men whose actions are doing real damage every single day… and those conversations rarely seem to spark the same moral fury.

But a quote on Facebook? That’s where someone chooses to plant their flag of righteousness?

If we want to change the world, maybe we should stop policing strangers in groups and start directing our outrage toward those who are actually causing harm.

There is a vast difference between recognising a well phrased idea and endorsing the life of the person who wrote it.

Engaging with someone’s work is not the same as validating their behaviour. Human beings are complex, art is complex and pretending otherwise doesn’t make us more ethical, it just makes us less honest.

So no, I’m not an apologist, and I won’t adopt someone else’s projection just because it’s loud.

I will continue to quote lines that resonate,

to acknowledge ideas without worshipping the creator, and to hold the nuance that seems increasingly unpopular to hold.

We can condemn harm without erasing every piece of art ever touched by a flawed human.